- Two of the September 11th hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar
and Nawaf Alhazmi, were known to the intelligence community. The FBI was
most certainly aware of them as a Bureau informant was one of their room
mates. The CIA became aware of them by, at least, January 2000, if not
sooner, because of an al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
which both of these "Saudi National, hi-jackers-to-be" attended.
FBI officials have, of course, insisted that if the CIA had passed along
current intelligence about the two men, the bureau would have been better
able to monitor and/or capture them.
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- After they left Malaysia, Almihdhar and Alhazmi took
flight-school lessons in San Diego. Both men moved in with a "tested"
undercover "asset" in September 2000, who had been working closely
with the FBI office in San Diego on terrorism cases related to Hamas, after
he befriended them at a Mosque in San Diego. This "land-lord"
even helped one of the terrorists open a bank account. A senior law-enforcement
official told NEWSWEEK the informant never provided the bureau with the
names of his two houseguests from Saudi Arabia. Nor does the FBI have any
reason to believe the informant was concealing their identities. (He could
not be reached for comment.) But the FBI concedes that a San Diego case
agent appears to have been at least aware that Saudi visitors were renting
rooms in the informant's house. (On one occasion, a source says, the case
agent called up the informant and was told he couldn't talk because "Khalid"--a
reference to Almihdhar--was in the room.) I. C. Smith, a former top FBI
counterintelligence official, says the case agent should have been keeping
closer tabs on who his informant was fraternizing with--if only to seek
out the houseguests as possible informants." They should have been
asking, "Who are these guys? What are they doing here?' This strikes
me as a lack of investigative curiosity." About six weeks after moving
into the house, Almihdhar left town, explaining to the landlord he was
heading back to Saudi Arabia to see his daughter. Alhazmi moved out at
the end of 2000.
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- While that was developing in San Diego, what was the
Agency doing? The CIA claims it was gathering more information about both
men, such as: potential for violence, and similar "risk assessment"
profiling. It turns out that the CIA discoverd, a few months after the
bombing of the USS Cole, that one of the chief suspects in the Cole attack--
Tawfiq bin Attash -- was present at the "summit" and had been
photographed with Almihdhar and Alhazmi. Why then did the Agency wait until
Aug. 23, 2001, to send an urgent cable to U.S. Border and law-enforcement
agencies identifying the two men as "possible" terrorists? Obviously,
the CIA was too late. But how? Was it accidentally, incompetently, or deliberately?
Allegedly, the bureau did not connect the dots between 9-11 and the San
Diego connection until the informant heard the names of the Pentagon hijackers
and called his case agent. "I know those guys," the informant
purportedly said, referring to Almihdhar and Alhazmi. "They were my
roommates."
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- The joint House and Senate intelligence committees investigating
the 9-11 attacks is tentatively due to begin public hearings Sept. 18,
2002. Difficulty in "getting to the bottom" of exactly what happened
that allowed the attacks to be successful, has drawn support for legislation
that would create a special blue-ribbon commission, much like that formed
after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and after the sneak
attack on Pearl Harbor.
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- If we've learned anything from the history of so-called,
"Blue Ribbon Panels" it is this: They should NOT be employed
to evaluate evidence that differs from the OFFICIAL PARTY LINE, as they
won't even look for such evidence. Moreover, they will deny its existence
even when it's staring them in the face.
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